The primary school admissions arms race is unsustainable

Sixty thousand families have missed out on their first choice of primary
school. Rosie Murray-West, having just survived the system a
second-time around, offers her solutions to what has become a labyrinthine
nightmare for most parents.

Last night, as I clicked the ‘accept’ button on my second daughter’s school place (our first choice but not a 'fashionable' school I assure you dear reader), Irevisited a piece I wrote before I even started on the bizarre and scary world of getting my children an education.

What a difference a few years makes. Yesterday was primary school offer day for London and Surrey, and my Facebook feed quickly filled up with tales of triumph and tragedy from those who had taken on the mythical beast that is the Pan London eAdmissions system. Some were already buying the uniform, while others had the prospect of no school place at all. One friend mused: “What has the system come to when we are having to celebrate because J has got into the local school down the road?”

He’s right. What used to be a foregone conclusion has become a labyrinthine nightmare, where parents must make choices on their children’s education guided by Ofsted reports (possibly flawed, often out of date), local chatter (usually bonkers and out of date) and a table of results that shows only how much time the poor cooped-up children in their final year spend cramming for a set of pointless exams.

The result? One school gets popular and the middle-class rush towards it like a thundering Boden-clad herd. Other perfectly good schools acquire unsavoury reputations that are hard to shake off, and when parents get their children into these, it is as if their world has ended.

I’m not sure that my attitude towards that kind of hand-wringing has changed much since 2010, but there are other casualties of the system to whom I am far more sympathetic. Those who end up with no school place at all and must spend the summer worrying, and those who end up with one far away, and haven’t a chance of getting something more local because those who can spend the money on a lawyer for their school appeals. For them, the system stinks, and since overcrowding in primary schools has only got worse since 2010, the likelihood of decisions being reversed is less likely than ever.

For the rest of us, I’d love to see a simple prescription. Ban SATs tables, Ofsted reports, faith schools and ‘parental choice’ for a bit. Maybe everyone would end up at the school down the road. And maybe they’d discover that it wasn’t such a bad school after all. At the moment, educational choice belongs only to those who can afford school fees or good lawyers. The only winners from that are those in the legal profession.